The wisteria has come and gone, the plum treeshave burned like candles in the cup of earth,the almond has shed its pure blossomsin a soft ring around the trunk. Iris,rose, tulip, hillsides of poppy and lupin,gorse, wild mustard, California is blazingin the foolish winds of April. I have beenreading Keats—the poems, the letters, the life—for the first time in my 59th year, and Ihave been watching television after dinneras though it could bring me some obscure,distant sign of hope. This morning I roselate to the soft light off the eucalyptusand the overbearing odor of orange blossoms.The trees will give another year. They are giving.The few, petty clouds will blow awaybefore noon, and we will have sunshinewithout fault, china blue skies, and the beesgathering to splatter their little honey dotson my windshield. If I drive to the foothillsI can see fields of wildflowers on fire untilI have to look away from so much life.I could ask myself, Have I made a Soultoday, have I sucked at the teat of the Heartflooded with the experience of a world like ours?Have I become a man one more time? At twentyit made sense. I put down The Collected Poems,left the reserve room of the Wayne libraryto wander the streets of Detroit under a graysoiled sky. It was spring there too, and the bellsrang at noon. The out-patients from Harperwaited timidly under the great stone crossof the Presbyterian church for the trollyon Woodward Avenue, their pinched faces flushedwith terror. The black tower tilted in the windas though it too were coming down. It made sense.Before dark I’ll feel the lassitude enterfirst my arms and legs and spread like watertoward the deep organs. I’ll lie on my bedhearing the quail bark as they scurry fromcover to cover in their restless searchingafter sustenance. This place can break your heart.

From the shadow of domes in the city of domes,A snowflake, a blizzard of one, weightless, entered your roomAnd made its way to the arm of the chair where you, looking upFrom your book, saw it the moment it landed. That's allThere was to it. No more than a solemn wakingTo brevity, to the lifting and falling away of attention, swiftly,A time between times, a flowerless funeral. No more than thatExcept for the feeling that this piece of the storm,Which turned into nothing before your eyes, would come back, That someone years hence, sitting as you are now, might say:“It's time. The air is ready. The sky has an opening.”